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WILLIAM SAMUEL JOHNSON AND THE 
MAKING OF THE CONSTITUTION.^- 



KEY. W. G. ANDREWS, D.D. 



Mr. Gladstone calls the Federal Constitution "the most 
wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain 
and purpose of man." But this description, however correct 
it may be as regards the written instrument, becomes a little 
misleading when appended, by way of contrast, to a descrip- 
tion of the British constitution as "the most subtile organism 
which has proceeded from progressive history." Our consti- 
tution, also, is the product of history. The federal system, 
the combination of central and local government in a strong 
nation composed of free states, was not constructed in 1787. 
It was accepted in spite of themselves by men whose greatest 
inerit was that they were wise and patriotic enough to accept 
it at the expense of cherished theories of their own. The 
theories gave way in the presence of a great fact, the exis- 
tence of thii'teen political societies already acting as one soci- 
ety, and yet continuing to act as thirteen. And so those men 
consented to have the paper which they were drawing up dic- 
tated to them by the voice of history, which said imperatively, 
E l-'luribus Unum, "one out of many." 

It is well-known that Connecticut, through two of her dele- 
gates to the constitutional convention, Roger Sherman and 
Oliver Ellsworth, bore a leading part in securing the accept- 
ance of the fedeml system. And her recent historian, Pro- 
fessor Johnston, has pointed out one of her qualifications for 
such a task in the fact that she had long maintained "a fede- 

* Paper read before the Fairfield County Historical Society, on Monday evening, De- 
cember 12, 1887. 



rative democracy" of lier own.i Her towns were, even more 
completely than those of Massachusetts, so many free repub- 
lics, firmly knit together in a vigorous commonwealth through 
a legislature in which both towns and commonwealth were 
represented. For a century and a half Connecticut had been 
the United States in miniature. But another qualification 
may be found in the attitude of the colony as a member, 
albeit a very small one, of the British empire. It was con- 
spicuous among the colonies at once for its freedom and its 
loyalty, for the co-existence of large powers of local govern- 
ment with a generally prompt obedience to a central govern- 
ment. Its temper was illustrated just a century before its 
delegates did their great work at Philadelphia, when in the 
autumn of 1687, it submitted quietly to a temporary abroga- 
tion of its marvellously free charter, while that document prob- 
ably found a safe hiding-place in a hollow tree, the oak which 
so fitly sheltered our transplanted vine. 

I desire this evening to set forth the service rendered in 
the making of the Constitution by the man whom Connecticut 
placed at the head of her delegation. Dr. William Samuel John- 
son. In the convention itself his influence, though it must 
have been considerable, was at all events less palpable than 
that of Sherman and Ellsworth. But for more than twenty 
years he had been occupied, in America and in England, with 
the problem of the right adjustment of local and central 
authority. He had done his utmost to secure the combina- 
tion of colonial freedom with imperial control, and what he 
accomplished was so far a contribution to the development of 
the federal out of the imperial system, of the American out of 
the British constitution. What he and his colleagues per- 
formed in 1787 was for him the completion of a task which he 
began in 1765. Our study of his labors upon the Constitution 
will therefore cover his whole career as a statesman. 

His history before his public life opened must be given 
very briefly. The chief source of information is his '-Life 
and Times," by the Eev. Dr. Beardsley, of New Haven. This 
work has lately come to a second edition, as it well deserved, 

1 Connecticut. A Study of a Commonwealth-Democracy, Pref . viii.-ix. ; 321-2, etc. 



and is principally complained of for being- too short. But for 
this fault I might have had nothing to tell you, but I should 
certainly have had nothing to tell you had the book not been 
written. It has a double interest for your Society, since its 
author, like its subject, is a native of Fairfield county. 

William Samuel Johnson was born on the seventh of Octo- 
ber, 1727 (old style), in the town of Stratford, which then in- 
cluded that portion of the ancient parish of Stratfield in Avhich 
we are now assembled. He was the eldest son of the leading 
Episcopal clergyman of the colony, Dr. Samuel Johnson, who 
became the first president of King's (now Columbia) College, 
New York. After being carefully trained at home young John- 
son graduated at New Haven in 1744, studied for three years 
longer as a "scholar of the house" on the Berkeley founda- 
tion, (a privilege won by his industry and ability.) attended 
lectures and took his second degree at Harvard in 1747, and 
entered on the practice of law in his native town. He had 
rare gifts of oratory, including much grace of action, with a 
voice of singular richness and melody. While he was a dili- 
gent student of law, he made himself familiar with literature, 
and his mental discipline and acquisitions were such that he 
was found a delightful companion by the first man of letters 
in England, his namesake, Samuel Johnson. The latter said 
that there was "scarce any one whose acquaintance he had 
more desired to cultivate." At the time when our more care- 
ful examination of his career begins he is described by the 
historian Pitkin as "one of the ablest lawj^ers and most accom- 
plished scholars in America." 

After serving two or three times as a deputy from Strat- 
ford, Mr. Johnson was made one of three commissioners 
selected to represent the colony in the Stamp Act congress, 
which met in New York on his thirty-eighth birthday (new 
style), or October 7, 1765. The appointment of an Episcopa- 
lian to such a position shows that the Connecticut assembly, 
filled with Congregationalists, was not controlled by ecclesias- 
tical prejudices, and equally shows that Johnson himself was 
not controlled by them. Most Connecticut Episcopalians be- 
lieved that avowed opposition to the Stamp Act was "nothing 



short of rebellion." ^ All that the colony desired of its com- 
missioners, (who were charged to " form no such junction 
with" the rest as would subject them to the power of a 
majority,) was that they should unite in a "dutiful, loyal and 
humble Representation " to king and parliament. ^ But they 
were expected to "avow opposition" to the Stamp Act, and 
Johnson was fully prepared to answer this expectation. While 
he agreed with his fellow Episcopalians in disapproving of 
riotous opposition, which was perhaps what they had chiefly 
in mind, he was, unlike them, in hearty sympathy with those 
Americans who soon came to be called whigs. And this im- 
j)lied much more than sympathy with the English whigs. It 
was the latter who had imposed the tax against which the for- 
mer protested, and they imposed it in accordance with the 
chief article of the whig creed, the supremacy of parliament. 
This article, when asserted against the crown, was in fact the 
safeguard of English liberty, and English statesmen did not 
understand why it was not equally valid as against the colo- 
nies. And the appeals which the colonies sometimes addressed 
to the king as their constitutional protector from the tyranny 
of parliament, must have sounded to whig ministers strangely 
like toryism. When Franklin said a few years later, (1770) 
that the lords and commons had "been long encroaching on 
the rights of" the sovereign, he confessed that they would 
think his doctrine almost treason against themselves.* And 
it is a striking illustration of the constitutional change which 
was in progress that the American revolution began with an 
apparent denial of the great doctrine of the English revolu- 
tion. The necessity for this lay in what John Eichard Green 
describes as the failure of England "to grasp the difference 
between an empire and a nation," between "an aggregate of 
political bodies" related more or less closely "to a central 
state," and "an aggregate of individual citizens" forming one 
state. England did not even perceive that the colonies were 

2 Chiirch Documents. Connecticut, ii. 81. 

3 Connecticut Colonial Records, xii. 410. 

4 The Life of Benjamin Franklin. Written by himself. John Bigelow. ii. 51. 



"political bodies;" "they were not states but coi'iDorations," 
Jike a borough or a bank. '^ 

The Stamp Act, which was the imposition by parliament of 
a tax on the paper to be used in all sorts of legal and commer- 
cial transactions, struck at both the personal and the political 
rights of British subjects in America. By assuming to take 
their money without their consent given through their repre- 
sentatives, parliament had violated a fundamental principle of 
the British constitution, and a principle about which there 
was no direct dispute. It had also violated a principle which 
Americans supposed to be established, and which flowed from 
the former, that the colonial assemblies, in which alone Amer- 
icans were or could be represented, had the sole power of, at 
any rate, internal taxation. This principle was in dispute, as 
it continued to be throughout the struggle, forming the great 
question at issue. And while the congress had of course to 
protest against the invasion both of personal and political 
rights, it was the latter which had chiefly to be asserted. It 
was the business of the congress to insist on the difference 
between a nation and an empire, to complement and limit the 
national doctrine of parliamentary supremacy by the imperial 
doctrine of state rights. 

The part taken by our Stratford lawyer in the transactions 
of the congress is described by Mr. Bancroft in half a sen- 
tence. The question being the ground on which the demand 
for the redress of grievances should be based, " Johnson, of 
Connecticut," says the historian, " submitted a paper which 
pleaded charters from the crown." Mr. Bancroft goes on to 
tell us how Robert Livingston, of New York, and Christopher 
Gadsden, of South Carolina, opposed the plan of resting the 
protest on the charters. Gadsden said, among other things, 
"I wish the charters may not ensnare u.s at last, by drawing- 
different colonies to act differently in this great cause . . . 
There ought to be no New Englmd man, no New Yorker, 
known on the -Continent, but all of us Amei-icans." Instead 
of appealing to charters they "should stand upon the broad 
common ground of" their natural rights "as men and as the 

5 History of the English People, Am. Ed., iv. 226-7. 



descendants of Englishmen." And, accordiug to Mr. Ban- 
croft, " these views prevailed ; and . . . the argument for 
American liberty from royal grants was avoided." ^ Our famous 
historian hardly meant to give the impression that Johnson, 
(of whom he elsewhere speaks with great respect,) would have 
used no other argument than this, and his account of the pro- 
ceedings is perhaps too condensed to admit a fuller report of 
one member's action. But as our interest just now centres in 
that member, it is pleasant to be able to remove a possible 
suspicion that he distinguished himself at the congress merely 
by an abortive effort to have the rights of man ascribed to the 
favor of kings. 

The paper of which Mr. Bancroft speaks is evidently one in 
Johnson's handwriting which was found among his manu- 
scripts by Timothy Pitkin, in the form of a committee's re- 
port. In this paper the rights which the Stamp Act invaded 
are traced back through the British constitution to the foun- 
dation of that "in the law of nature and universal reason." 
Clearly the author of the report did not suppose them to have 
had their origin in "royal grants." The charters, "and other 
royal instruments," are then mentioned by way of proving 
that the rights in question had been formally recognized as 
belonging to British American subjects," and Gadsden ad- 
mitted that the charters might safely be appealed to as con- 
firmatory. The report proceeds to acknowledge parliament, 
.i"as consisting of the king, lords and commons," to be "the 
I supreme legislature of the whole empire," and " the final 
/judges" even as to those '■'■ esse^itial rights'''' which could not 
justly be infringed. (The italics are in the report ) Further- 
more, it had become necessary "for the enjoyment of those 
rights . . . that several colony jurisdictions should be 
jerected," subject "to the supreme power of Great Britain." 
' Under these jurisdictions the colonists had expected to be at 
least as free in America as they or their forefathers were else- 
where, and by them laws had been made and taxes levied. 
These quotations present an argument drawn mainly neither 
from abstract principles nor from the charters, but from the 

6 History of the United States, Cent. Ed., iii. 509-10. 



British constitution as imperial, from the recognized legiti- 
macy of certain dependent states, existing without prejudice 
to the supremacy of a central government. This supremacy, 
it will be observed, is asserted very strongly, and as extending 
to legislation. Many Americans learned to deny to parlia-j 
ment the power of imperial, as distinguished from national,! 
legislation, but Johnson always believed the former to be neces- 
sary to the government of an empire. 

Of course the charters, by which the "colony jurisdictions" 
had been established, though not named in direct connectioia 
with the latter, furnished an obvious proof of the existence of 
the colonies as bodies politic. To have appealed to those in- 
struments as proving this would only Jiave been asserting in 
another form that the British constitution had extended its 
shelter over new states ; that, as Connecticut virtually asserted 
at about the same time, the charters themselves were a jDart 
of the constitution.'' It would have been to act in the spirit 
of those who had for centuries appealed to Magna Charta; in 
accordance with the sober traditions of 

" A land of settled government, 
A land of just and old renown, 
Where freedom broadens slowly down 
From precedent to precedent." 

But it was not essential to the argument to name the char- 
ters, and Johnson was probably quite willing that the word 
should be omitted from the addresses which were to be sent 
to England. 

Four papers, including a declaration of rights, were issued 
by the congress, and Pitkin has no hesitation in saying that 
the report presented by Johnson "formed the basis" of all of 
them. The address to the king was largely or wholly his 
work, and set forth the great political fact of the early establish- 
ment of " several governments " in America very much as does 
his preliminary paper. The petition to the house of com- 
mons, reported by another committee, is particularly interest- 
ing, as containing a very plain allusion to the charters. "The 
several subordinate provincial legislatures have been moulded' 

7 Conn. Col. Bee, xii. 422. 



into forms as nearly resembling that of the mother country, 
as hy his majesty'' s royal predecessors was thought convenient ; 
and these legislatures seem to have been loisely and graciously 
established, that the subjects in the colonies might, under the 
due administration thereof, enjoy the happy fruit of the British 
government."^ (The italics are mine.) The congress, in 
fact, being composed of practical men, of English blood, did 
not dream of overlooking that action of the crown by which 
the state rights which they had to assert had been solemnly 
confirmed. It merely avoided the use of the word " charters ;" 
it did not avoid what Mr. Bancroft calls "the argument for 
American liberty from royal grants." And the word was 
omitted, not because "natui-al justice" and "abstract truth" 
were the only pleas which it became Americans to urge, but 
because, as Gadsden suggested, there was a possibility of divi- 
sion of interests owing to the unequal grants of power made to 
the different colonies. Self-government, for example, was 
most fully provided for in Connecticut and Rhode Island, 
while Maryland seemed best secured against parliamentary 
taxation. And although it was high time, as Gadsden farther 
said, for the colonists to think of themselves as all alike Amer- 
icans, they could only act effectively, they always did act, they 
I were at that moment acting, as members of distinct political 
^bodies, as citizens of Massachusetts, and New York, and Vir- 
ginia. And neither Gadsden nor Johnson was able at the 
time to sign the addresses because of restrictions under which 
South Carolina and Connecticut, respectively, had laid them. 
To have disregarded the "colony jurisdictions" in 1765 would 
have obscured the very fact which it was so important to get 
clearly recognized, (as clearly, at any rate, as they yet recog- 
nized it themselves,) that the colonies were already states, 
with the right, as such, to protect the colonists. 

Dr. Beardsley tells us that the three memorials sent to 
England were all prepared by Johnson. ^ The statement is 
supported by the abundant use made of the paper which he 

8 Pittin's Political and Civil History of tlie U. S., i. 5, 6., 183, 4i8-55 ; Principles and 

Acts of ths Revolution, etc., Hezekiah Niles ; Ed. 1876, 155-69. 

9 Life and Times of William Samuel Johnson, 32. 



laid before the congress, and by the fact that the memorials, 
though reported by different committees, were evidently drawn 
up in concert. His influence in this famous assembly has 
hardly been appreciated. Though he was an eloquent speaker i 
he was probably better fitted to shine at the bar than in debate, ' 
and when he sat in deliberative bodies his best work was done 
in committees. In this case, as in others, fame has been kinder 
to debaters than to committee-men. But it seems fair to say 
that when the American states formally and in unison claimed 
their place in the British empire as bodies politic, William 
Samuel Johnson was their leading spokesman. Undoubtedly 
what he said was what many others were saying, but it was 
felt that few could say it so well. And if he was not among 
those who appear to change the course of history, he admir- 
ably discharged the more useful function of helping to keep 
general action in harmony with natural progress. 

That Johnson was then in full sympathy with the mass of 
the Connecticut people was shown in various ways. He joined 
in passive resistance to the Stamp Act while it was in force, I 
and when it was repealed he was chosen to thank the king, 
and to assure him, with perfect truth, of the "unshaken loy- 
alty" of the commonwealth. Before the congress assembled 
he had been one of twenty men nominated by popular vote 
for seats in the Governor's council, or board of assistants, and 
in the following April he was one of the twelve chosen, by 
popular vote, to occupy the position. Like all the higher of- 
fices in Connecticut at that period, this was commonly a per- 
manent one ; the freemen, having made a good choice, adhered 
to it, though they might have made a new choice every year. 
In the meantime Johnson had been honored in a different way 
through his father's influence, with the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, the university of Oxford having conferred on him the 
degree of Doctor of Laws. The title had been. well earned by 
his lucid exposition of the British constitution in the Stamp 
I Act congress, though that consideration probably had no 
great weight at Oxford. 

Dr. Johnson had sat but a short time in the upper house 
when Connecticut gave him what was perhaps the strongest 



k 






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10 



proof that could have been given of confidence in his ability 
and integrity. She was summoned to defend before the king 
in council her title to a large tract of land, claimed in behalf 
of the Mohegan Indians. The case had been in litigation for 
seventy years, it had been closely connected with attacks on 
the colonial charter, and there was danger that an unfavor- 
able decision would be used to secure the forfeiture of the 
charter as proving misgovernment, if not dishonesty. The 
life of the colony, as a free commonwealth, almost seemed to 
depend on the result. And when Johnson was sent, at the 
close of the year 1766, to conduct the defence, and to serve 
the colonial cause in such other ways as might be open, the 
choice showed that the assembly could not find an abler law- 
yer. It also showed absolute trust in him as a man. It was 
perhaps not known, indeed, that his father had learned to 
detest the New England charters, and thought the govern- 
ments which they sanctioned "pernicious." This attitude of 
the elder Johnson had no doubt been reached through the 
pressure of ecclesiastical controversy, leading him to believe 
that the Connecticut charter gave the Congregationalists an 
unfair advantage, i ° It ought to be easy to forgive him now, 
since Connecticut herself long ago abolished the charter for 
very much the same reason. But whether his views on this 
point had become public or not, there was no doubt about his 
intense, and perfectly reasonable, desire for an American ejjis- 
cQpate. And to most people in Connecticut bishops seemed 
even more intolerable than stamped paper. It was feared that 
their salaries would be raised by taxation, and that they would 
set up courts of probate and divorce. These fears were not 
feigned, for opposition to American bishops ceased when the 
colonies became independent ; that the danger was not quite 
imaginary, though exaggerated, has been admitted by candid 
Episcopalians from that time to this. In 1766 anxiety on this 
subject had been freshly excited, but when the alarm was 
greatest Connecticut Congregationalists sent to the seat of 
danger, and to the society of the English primate, the son of 
the man from whose influence they had most to fear, certain 

10 Beardsley's Life and Correspondence of Samuel Jolinson, 206, 279, 295, etc. 



11 



to be charged by his father, as he was charged, to spare no 
efforts to get bishops for America. They could hardly have 
given more emphatic testimony to his virtue and enlightened 
patriotism. He would himself have welcomed a bishop clothed 
with purely spiritual powers, and he lived to do it. But he 
was unalterably opposed to the half-secular episcopate which 
the colonists dreaded, and which even his father did not ask 
for. 

Owing to repeated postponements of the Mohegan case the 
younger Johnson was absent nearly five years, or until the 
autumn of 1771. The publication by the Massachusetts His- 
torical Society in 1885, of "The Trumbull Papers," contain- 
ing his official correspondence with the Connecticut gover- 
nors, Pilkin and Trumbull, makes it easy to follow his course 
as colonial agent. In the preface to this volume Johnson's 
letters are described as "written with great elegance of style," 
and as graphically reporting parliamentary debates, while the 
writer is called " a man of rare insight, great common sense, 
and most excellent judgment." Ninety years before, the cor- 
responding secretary of the society. Dr. Jeremy Belknap, wrote : 
"I have read the letters repeatedly with delight, and have 
gained a better idea of the political system than from all the 
books published during that period." Mr. Bancroft consulted 
them in manuscript, and often quotes from them. 

When Johnson reached London, in February, 1767, there 
had been no renewal of parliamentary taxation, though the 
right to renew it was maintained. William Pitt, lately made 
Earl of Chatham, was the nominal head of the ministry, and 
was inflexibly opposed to taxation. But his health was giving 
way, and he soon ceased to take part in public business, though 
he did not resign his post until October, 1768. When Chat- 
ham became inactive the chancellor of the exchequer, Charles 
Townshend, a brilliant but impulsive and unstable man, 
assumed the leadership. He died in the same year (1767) but 
in the meantime he had, as it would almost seem in a fit of pet- 
ulance, induced parliament to lay a duty on several articles, 
including tea, for the purpose of raising an American revenue 
to be used in paying the salaries of American governors and 



12 



judges. This would liave made those high officials independent 
of the people but left them dependent on the king, a situation 
very unfavorable to freedom. The colonists had heretofore 
submitted, after a fashion, to the imposition of duties, or to 
vi^hat was called external taxation, in the way of regulating 
trade. But they now began to give up the distinction between 
internal and external taxation, and they also began to give up 
the importation of dutiable goods. In the mean time the 
special administration of the colonies was assigned to Lord 
Hillsborough, who retained it during the whole of Johnson's 
residence in England. Hillsborough was diligent and court- 
eous, but obstinate and arbitrary. He called the American 
theory of colonial self-government "a polytheism in politics," 
and "fatal to the constitution." ^ ^ In January, 1770; Lord 
North became prime minister. He had ability and good na- 
ture, but was almost entirely controlled by the king, who, as 
Mr. Green says, "was in fact the minister," and wholly re- 
sponsible for "the shame of the darkest hour of English his- 
tory." ^ - In March, 1770, Lord North introduced, and par- 
liament passed, a bill removing all the new duties except that 
on tea. But they were removed not because they were un- 
constitutional but because they were "anti-commercial." 
Throughout the whole period of Johnson's agency, therefore, 
the attitude of England was essentially the same. Being a 
single state of the empire she claimed the right to lay burdens 
on the other states. 

In these circumstances, Johnson showed himself, to borrow 
a phrase of his own, "a hearty American." His devotion was 
proved, if in no other way, by his consenting to remain so 
many years absent from his family at a very great sacrifice of 
interest and feeling. But he was also willing to incur danger 
for the common cause. When Townshend's proposals were 
under discussion, soon after his arrival, and colonial agents 
were forbidden to attend the sessions, he got admission to the 
gallery, and sat there taking notes while the speaker was assur- 
ing George Grenville, the late prime minister, that no agents 

11 Trumbull Papers, (Collect. Mass. Hist. Soc. 5tli Series, ix.) 307. 

12 Hist. Eng. Peop. ; iv. 252. 



13 

were present. He told Governor Pitkin that lie should renew 
the attempt at the risk of imprisonment. ^ ^ His view of polit- 
ical matters was that of Americans generally. He believed 
that the dispute was not a struggle between the head of the 
empire and seditious provinces. "For clearly," he wrote, 
" the controversy is .... between subject and subject, 
between the people of America and the people of Britain, 
which shall have the power over American property." This 
was precisely Franklin's opinion, as transmitted from England 
in 1770.^* And Johnson judged of men, in their public 
capacity, by their attitude on the general subject of colonial 
rights. He was very much afraid of Lord Chatham because 
he knew that Chatham held "the dangerous idea of aright 
to restrain us absolutely from every species of manufacture." 
"Should he come into power," added Johnson, he must be 
obeyed; "it is with him but a word and a blow." ^^ In fact 
Johnson found but few friends of America in England, as he 
estimated friendship, though he had personal friends in all. 
parties. There were few who admitted her title to what he 
really claimed for her, equal political rights with England. 

And like a "hearty American" Johnson rejoiced in the 
"firmness and intrepidity" with which the colonies met the 
efforts of the ministry at once to "deceive" and to "intimi- 
date" them, and was delighted by the assurances which were 
given him "of the firm universal union of all the people of 
America to assert and maintain their indubitable rights." 
This union, he said, "joined to a prudent, well-advised con- 
duct, must render them impregnable, and insure their suc- 
cess."^ ^ The conduct which he thought prudent and well- 
advised was not by any means hanging custom-house officers 
in effigy, nor breaking their windows. He often complained 
of the obstacles which such proceedings threw in his way. 
"What he did emphatically approve of, and constantly implore 
his countryraen to persist in, was the non-importation agree- 

13 Trum. Pap., 234; Life and Times, 41. 

14 Trmn. Pap., 317 ; Life of Franklin, ii. 51. 

15 Trum. Pap., 366, 487. 

16 Trum. Pap., 358, 375. 



14 



ments. Indeed, the substitution of "some of the more salu- 
tary herbs of " America, for the ''expensive exotic" tea, was 
one of the first things which he thought of when the duties 
were imposed.^'' He would not believe "that any American 
of consequence could liave been guilty of" evading the agree- 
ments ; he asked why the people should not stop using, since 
the merchants must then stop importing ; he hoped that the 
threat to make the agreements criminal would bi'ing about this 
"much more effectual" agreement. As time went on, and the 
combinations against British goods, in spite of violations and 
evasions, and a temporary failure to reduce trade, which he 
at once acknowledged and accounted for, began finally to tell 
on both commerce and manufactiu^es, he became almost pas- 
sionate in his plea for "union and firmness." "All depends 
upon it," he said; "the game . . . is in their own hands 

. . I must yet believe that there is wisdom, virtue, and 
patriotism enough in that country, not only to save it from 
ruin, but to fix its right,? on a firm basis." ^ ^ 

Johnson was distinguished for his moderation, but it was 
because, being a strong man, he could control strong feeling, 
not because he did not feel strongly. And in this correspond- 
ence he repeatedly shows himself capable of intense indigna- 
tion against tyrannical words and acts. Thus he denounces 
those who had told the ministers that the American opposi- 
tion was "a petty, desperate, dying faction," as "wretched 
sycophants." The ministers, or some of their English advisers, 
were malicious "madmen, who would wreak all their wicked 
wrath upon the colonies." He could even wish that some of 
them "might atone by their forfeited heads for the badness 
of their hearts."! 9 

There is no room to doubt Johnson's devotion to America, 
but he was none the less devoted to the British crown. Colo- 
nial and imperial interests were both dear to him, and it is 
curious to observe how instinctively he speaks as an English- 
man in the presence of annoyance or danger from without the 



17 Trum. Pap.,236. 

18 Trum. Pap., 298, 319, 384, 40e, 423-4, 432-3. 

19 Trum. Pap., 375, 377. 



15 



empire. " Our court, it is said, is not upon good terms with 
that of Portugal, nor are we in the best humor with the 
Dutch." When France becomes insolent, and "the Span- 
iards, too, have been very saucy," he writes, as if he had been 
one of the ministry which he denounced so fiercely, "we are 
therefore arming as all other powers of Europe have done 
before us . ... we are preparing to meet the threatening 
storm." He has even warm praise for the "firmness and forti- 
tude" of the government in its foreign policy. When what 
he calls "our rupture with Spain," seemed to foreshadow a 
general war, he said that "the spirited conduct of Lord 
North" had "given bim great reputation," and his sympathies 
went with North in this matter against a parliamentary op- 
position which included those who were most friendly to 
America. ^ " And he could fairly expect the Connecticut gov- 
ernors whom he addressed to share his feelings. Pitkin 
declared that the colonists idolized "the British constitution, 
government and nation." And as for Connecticut, he wrote: 
"Not a disloyal thought lurks in the breast of anyone."2i 
Trumbull labored to the very last moment for peace, with 
freedom, within the empire. Fidelity at once to the local and 
to the central government was as possible under tbe imperial 
as under the federal system, and the former system was edu- 
cating Americans for the latter. 

At the same time Johnson himself perceived that a separa- 
tion was more than probable, and while he did not desire it, 
he felt that it might be advantageous to the colonies. In 
1769 he wrote to a friend in Connecticut : " If we were wise and 
could form some system of free government upon just princi- 
ples, we might be very happy without any connection with 
this country." But he feared that Americans would "fall 
into factions and parties," and "destroy one another," and so 
he pleaded for moderation on both sides. ^ ^ And he undoubt- 
edly still believed, as he did at the time of the Stamp act con- 
gress, that colonial freedom was compatible with the existence 



20 Trum. Pap., 385-6, 396, 456-7, 461-5, 489. 

21 Trum. Pap., 283, 287. 

22 Life and Times, 65. 



16 



of a "supreme legislature," namely, parliament. Franklin, on 
the other hand, was gradually reaching the conviction that 
parliament, as then constituted, had no right to legislate for 
the colonies at all, and that the various states of the empire 
had at present no lawful bond of union except the king, as 
had formerly been the case with regard to England and Scot- 
land. A political union of this sort, however, would have left 
the distant American states about as little members of the 
British empire as Hanover was. And even Franklin seemed 
to prefer such a union as had been formed between England 
and Scotland, through a parliament representing both. ^ 3 But 
such a union, if we understand him literally, would have done 
away with the colonial assemblies ; it would have been a con- 
solidation, turning the empire into a nation, with an ocean in 
the middle of it. The modern imperial system of Great 
Britain has taken very much the direction indicated in Frank- 
lin's conception of the old system. But, although parliament 
has not wholly relinquished its share in the government of the 
empire, the practical independence of the colonies in legisla- 
tion seems to be carrying them towards complete indepen- 
dence, something which neither Franklin nor Johnson desired 
for the colonies of their day. The federal system of America, 
on the contrary, though its supreme legislature is really rejD- 
resentative, on the whole more closely resembles that which 
Johnson conceived of as then existing, and promises to last, 
by escaping both consolidation and separation. Johnson saw 
as clearly as Franklin that there had been not only an abuse 
([but a usurpation of power by parliament, but he apparently 
saw more clearly than Franklin that a combination of general 
with local legislation belonged to the true constitution of an 
empire, and would best secure its stability. 

Our colonial agent's highest service to the American cause 
was rendered through his skillful performance of his proper 
task, the defence of the state rights of Connecticut. Profes- 
sor Johnston says that the government of this colony was kept 
"so free from crown control that it became really the exemplar 



23 Life of Franklin, i. 515, 518, 567 ; ii. 63. 



17 

of the rights at which all the colonies finally aimed."^* They 
are all supposed to enjoy those rights under federal control, 
and it was your Fairfield County statesman who so guarded 
them for this commonwealth, and therefore for all her sisters, 
during the closing years of the colonial period, that the charter 
jDassed safely from the king to the people, and a "royal grant," 
wholly unchanged, was found worthy to be formally acknowl- 
edged by the most democratic of republics as its own work. 
The Charter Oak had been itself for the time transplanted from 
Hartford to Westminster. Johnson's task was undoubtedly 
far easier because he found that Connecticut was "rather a 
favorite colony." The genuine loyalty of the commonwealth 
thus had its reward, and her representative did his own work 
so well because he so completely represented her at her best, 
through his purity of character, his highly trained intelligence 
and his mastery of himself. In these qualities, as in courtesy 
and grace, he was such another envoy as she had had about a 
century before in the man who won the charter, the younger 
John Winthrop. 

Johnson's management of the Mohegan case, with the help 
of the best (and most expensive) English counsel, was sub- 
stantially successful, and the danger which threatened the 
colonial constitution in that quarter was avoided. But he' 
had much other work to do. Early in the year 1768 he had 
an encounter with Lord Hillsborough. The interview, which 
lasted about two hours, is described at some length by Mr. 
Bancroft, ^ ^ and I need give but an outline of the; discussion. 
Hillsborough complained that the British ministry "seemed 
to have too little connection with" Connecticut. Johnson 
accounted for this chiefly by the "good order and tranquillity," 
of the colony, and by the fact that its constitution, not mak- 
ing it, like some provinces, directly dependent on the crown, 
left little occasion for troubling the home government with 
its affairs. Hillsborough then said that the colonial laws 
ought to be sent to the ministers to be rectified, if "amiss." 
Johnson politely assured him that he might have a copy "for 

24 Connecticut, Pref. viii. 
23 Hist. U. S., iv. 65-8. 



18 



bis private perusal," and as a book of reference for bis clerks. 
But if be wisbed tbe laws transmitted for ministerial inspec- 
tion and approval, tbe cbarter jjrovided against tbat, and tbe 
colony "would never submit to" it. Tbis drew an attack 
upon tbe cbarter as perbaps containing extravagant grants of 
power, wbicb were necessarily void. Tbus tbe power of abso- 
lute legislation "tended to tbe absurdity of" creating "an 
independent state." Jobnson answered tbat every corpora- 
tion migbt make laws, tbe extent of its capacity depending on 
tbe nature of tbe corporation, in tbe present case a colony. 
Hillsborougb admitted tbe rigbt to make by-laws, but be dis- 
tiuguisbed between tbat and tbe wide range of ' legislation 
common in 'New England. A similar distinction was made 
not quite twenty years later in tbe constitutional convention, 
j wben Madison, in replying to Jobnson's plea for tbe states as 
\ political societies, virtually ranked tbem witb sucb corpora- 
tions as are only competent to pass by-laws. ^ ^ Jobnson called 
Connecticut a corporation in bis discussion witb Hillsborougb, 
for so did tbe cbarter, and be was quite ready to acknowledge 
tbe incorporating power of tbe crown. But be pointed out tbat 
sucb a corporation as a colony "included in its idea full poweirs 
of legislation," and ougbt not to be classed witb corporations 
of a lower grade, like towns. Hillsborougb now apparently 
gave up bis contention tbat royal approval was necessary to 
give validity to Connecticut legislation. But be was sure tbat 
it sbould be regularly submitted to tbe privy council, tbat 
tbey migbt disapprove acts "repugnant to tbe law of England," 
for sucb acts were forbidden by tbe cbarter itself. Jobnson 
parried tbis final tbrust by denying tbat tbe power to deter- 
mine wbetber a law "was witbin tbat proviso or not" be- 
1- longed to anybody except "a court of law, baving jurisdic- 
tion of tbe matter" to wbicb tbe act related. Tbis was mucb 
tbe same as saying tbat tbe constitutionality of a law of Con- 
necticut could only be settled judicially, tbrougb action 
brougbt in particular cases ; an extremely different tiling from 
pronouncing upon tbe laws as tbey were passed, and apart 

26 Elliot's Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Vol. v. (supplemen- 
tary), 256. 



19 



from any case arising under them, but extremely similar to 
the provision which Johnson helped to make in behalf of 
State rights, and against Madison, in 1787.-'' At the latter 
period it was from interference on the part of the general 
legislature rather than on the part of the executive branch of 
the central government, that the local legislature was to be 
protected in its own sj^here, but in either case the same local 
rights were assigned to the same guardianship, that of the 
judiciary. A striking feature of the American constitution 
was thus exhibited to a British minister by Dr. Johnson in 
expounding the British constitution, while America was still 
part of the British empire. Johnson added that the validity 
of colonial laws might be settled in the colonial courts, com- 
ing, if necessary, on appeal, before the English courts, but' 
before the courts alone, and not before the privy council, act- 
ing as a board of revision. Hillsborough continued to be 
afraid that the people of this commonwealth "were in danger 
of being too much a separate, independent state," and he did 
not get rid of the ajDprehension. But Johnson seems to have 
convinced him that a "royal grant" had recognized at least 
one complete political society within the empire, and outside 
of Great Britain, while he had defined its constitutional posi- 
tion in terms which nearly describe that which it now holds 
in the federal union. ^ ^ 

Dr. Johnson more than once had occasion to make a prac- 
tical use of the principles which he had laid down in this 
remarkable interview. In Februarj^, 1769, he warned Con- 
necticut against what he suspected to be a trap set for that 
colony and Rhode Island. An act of parliament had author- 
ized certain legislation by the American assemblies, which was 
to be subject to approval by the king in council. "I trust," 
he wrote, that "nobody will once think of passing an act to 
be transmitted here for approbation." ^ ^ Before many months 
somebody transmitted an act for disapprobation. Connecticut 
had suddenly set up a protective tariff in the shape of a duty 

y 27 ElUot's Debates, v. 170-1, 481-2. 

28 Trum. Pap., 253-62. 

29 Trum. Pap., 327-9. 



20 

of five per cent, on all imports, including- tliose brought 
directly from Great Britain. Lord Hillsborougli, in great in- 
dignation, declared that, on the American theory, Connecticut 
was taxing the whole empire, and he was determined to bring 
the act before the council. Johnson knew nothing about the 
motives for passing it, but he conjectured that it was designed 
to protect local dealers against unfair competition on the part 
of men who did not stay long enough in Connecticut to be 
taxed, which proved to be precisely the fact. This, he assured 
Hillsborough, was a very proper thing, and "well within the 
powers of the Assembly." After some three months of great 
anxiety he persuaded the minister to abandon his unpleasant 
intention about the act, and to give the assembly an opportu- 
nity to modify it, by excepting goods imported by English- 
men. This was conceding a privilege which Connecticut does 
not now enjoy. ^ " 

Before the agent's mind was at rest on this subject, (1770) 
the colony was again threatened with extrajudicial proceed- 
ings before the king in council. The Penn family addressed 
a petition to the king for the immediate removal of certain 
Connecticut settlers from lands near Wilkes-Barre, and sought 
to make the colony a party in the case along with the Susque- 
hanna Companj^, which was making the settlement. Johnson 
believed that the colony had, under its charter, a title to the 
lands in question which ought not to be surrendered. But 
the company could defend its own title without the coopera- 
tion of Connecticut, and he was very iinwilling to have the 
charter, with its grant of a belt reaching to the Pacific ocean, 
brought before the ministry at so critical a moment. He 
therefore earnestly advised Trumbull not to commit the col- 
ony, and he himself, by pursuing the same policy, secured an 
opinion from the Board of Trade, of w^hich Lord Hillsborough 
was president, to the effect that the case was "entirely within 
the jurisdiction of" the Pennsylvanian courts. '^^ It is quite 
likely that Johnson's former argument with Hillsborough in- 
fluenced this decision, and in any case he had saved the char- 
ter from some risk. 



30 Trum. Pap.. 387, 392-3, 397, 407, 419, 428, 443. 

31 Trum. Pap., 413-6, 443, 447-8, 453-4. 



21 

His last alarm on the subject of the charter perhaps caused 
Imn the greatest distress. He learned that a plan Avas formed, 
about the close of the year 1770, not to abohsh, but by so- 
called "regulations" to make nearly valueless, the charter of 
Massachusetts. He dreaded what might follow for Khode 
Island and Connecticut. "When charters are called in ques- 
tion," he wrote, "we have certainly more to fear because we 
have more to lose, than any other people upon earth." He 
trusted that his own colony would continue to be so prudent 
and temperate "as not to endanger the most valuable privi- 
leges that people ever enjoyed." He held the traditional Con- 
necticut view, colored by neighborly prejudices, of the pru- 
dence and temper of Massachusetts, which in turn used to 
think Connecticut timid and selfish, though that view always 
became untenable after fighting began. And Johnson now 
regarded the proposed treatment of the sister colouy as both 
impolitic and unrighteous, and very likely said as much to the 
ministers. Still, although he had some influence with Hills- 
borough, it is doubtful whether this appeared in the present 
abandonment of the design against Massachusetts, for which 
Franklin himself, then her agent, declined to claim any credit. ^ "' 
But Johnson's influence is apparent in the assurance which 
the secretary gave him that whatever was done Connecticut 
should not be involved. ^^ He could feel that he was leavino- 
the affairs of his own commonwealth in as good a condition 
as was then possible. As far as she was concerned he had 
successfully defended state rights, without seeming to impair 
the authority of the central government. 

But he could not feel that his countrymen in general had 
been steadfast in the cause of liberty. About a year before his 
return, or in August, 1770, he w\as confounded by the news 
that the agreements against trade with England, on which he 
had declared that the fate of the colonies hung, had been 
abandoned except as regarded tea. He clung to the hope that 
the virtue of the people, on which he had throughout depended 
more than on that of the merchants, would be equal to the 

' 32 Life of Franklin, ii. 65. 
33 Trum. Pap., 466-7, 470-1. 



22 



sacrifice of refrainiug from consumption. But in the follow- 
ing March he wrote that goods were about going to America 
to the amount of more than a million sterling, s* This had 
both pleased and strengthened the ministry, and he evidently 
believed that the proj)osed attack on Massachusetts had been 
encouraged by this sudden breaking down of the American 
defences. Moreover, the English opposition was utterly routed, 
and was, in Johnson's view, "equally destitute of principle 
with" the ministry, while scarcely more willing to concede 
their full rights to the colonists. He thought its leaders cap- 
able of little except "teasing the Administration," and as 
against them the latter probably had his sympathy. And the 
latter he describes as "in perfect plenitude of power;" in 
spite of a popular outbreak which he briefly describes, almost 
his last letter declares the ministry to be "in perfect peace."-"^ ^ 
On Johnson's return in October, 1771, the Assembly of Con- 
necticut thanked him "for his faithful service . . . his 
constant endeavors to promote the general cause of American 
liberty, and his steady attention to the true interests of this 
colony in particular. ''^'^ His restoration to his old place in 
the council was a sufficient proof that he and the freemen of 
the commonwealth were in substantial agreement. Much as 
he had deplored the abandonment of the non-importation 
policy, he was glad to see his countrymen peacefully inclined, 
and he hoped that discreet conduct on both sides would "per- 
fectly re-establish " harmony. ^ "' He certainly had not learned 
in less than a year to desire that the colonies should quietly 
acquiesce in arbitrary government, but he had, in common 
with other patriots, feared lest the two countries should "go 
on contending and fretting each other till" they should "be- 
come separate and independent empires." ^® The attitude in 
which he found the Americans relieved him from this anxiety, 
while their continued refusal to import tea assured him that 

34 Trum. Pap., 450, 479. 

35 Trum. Pap., 474, 480, 482. 

36 Life and Times, 86. 

ii7 Eancroft's Hist. V. S., iv. 326. 
38 Life and Times, 65. 



23 

they had not renounced the principle of home rule. He knew 
that acts of violence would simply irritate not alone the min- 
istry but the English people, and his utter lack of confidence 
in the English opposition made him hopeless of help from 
that quarter, while he probably thought the military power of 
England irresistible. The few letters of this period which 
are in print show, on the one hand, that he loved justice and 
hated oppression as intensely as ever, and, on the other, that 
he still thought the English enemies of the administration 
"the friends of confusion;'' and still believed the stability of 
the empire to demand not only an imperial executive but an 
imperial legislature. ^^ q^i^Q colonies probably contained no 
firmer adherent to the American cause, as Americans then 
understood it, namely, security for the rights of Englishmen 
under the British crown. 

In the meantime the non-importation of tea had proved a 
more powerful weapon than Johnson had ventured to hope. 
It had brought the East India Company into great straits, 
and the company obtained from the folly of the ministers 
authority to do what the Americans refused to do, namely, to 
bring tea to the colonial ports. Mr. Bancroft says that if this 
pei'mission had been accompanied by a removal of the duty it 
would have restored a good understanding. Nothing of the 
kind was thought of, and in December, 1773, the company's 
tea was thrown into Boston harbor. Johnson doubtless con- 
demned this act, but so did Washington and Franklin. Re- 
taliation came in the shape of a bill closing the jDort of Bos- 
ton, and one of the best friends of America, Colonel Barre, 
voted for it, though he opposed the companion bill which 
j)ractically annulled the Massachusetts charter. Johnson's 
moderation of temper never kept him from detesting tyranny 
even towards those whose course he may have thought injudi- 
cious, and we could have little doubt that h^ shared the indig- 
nation of his countrymen at these cruel enactments, even were 
there no other evidence to that effect. But we learn that the 
Episcopalians of Stratford joined in the contributions ever}-- 
where made for the relief of Boston. They continued to act 

39 Life and Times, 101-2, 207 (App.) 



24 



in this spirit througliout the war, while Dr. Beardsley tells vis 
that in "1774 not a man in Stratford was ready to dissent 
from revolutionary measures." *o Johnson's influence un- 
doubtedly appears in this attitude of the Stratford Episcopa- 
lians, but we need not infer that he personally approved of 
''revolutionary measures " And he was probably made very 
uneasy by the course which things wej-e taking. In March, 
1774, the Massachusetts assembly ordered the purchase of 
powder and cannon, and duriug the summer the militia were 
holding parades throughout the province. A similar bellige- 
rent disposition was showing itself elsewhere. Now John- 
son certainly thought that the British soldiers had no busi- 
ness in Boston, but they had not yet made open war, and he 
would naturally fear that if the colonists armed themselves 
they would be tempted to strike the first blow. Such an ap- 
prehension perhaps accounts for the fact that in October he 
resigned his commission as lieutenant-colonel of the fourth 
Connecticut regiment, of which he had previously been 
major. *i Various reasons might have led to this step, but 
neither lack of patriotism nor lack of courage was among them, 
and it was such a step as he would have been likely to take if 
he were seriously afraid that the colonies would jDlunge into 
an offensive war, having either the dismemberment of the 
empire, or the loss of colonial freedom as its probable issue. 
It would indicate no unwillingness to take part in defending 
the colonies, if attacked, even against the army of his sove- 
reign. In the same year he declined an appointment to rep- 
resent the colony in the first continental congress, and though 
he had a good excuse, he was certainly not sorry that he had 
one. The congress, however, upon the whole, pursued his 
own policy, and showed a sincere wish for peace and the unity 
of the empire. He could still feel that he was not essentially 
at variance with the majority of his sober-minded countrymen. 
And there were enough equally sober-minded men in Con- 
necticut to send Dr. Johnson once more to the upper house 

40 Orcutt's History of tlie Old Town of Stratford and the City of Biidgeport, Pt. I., 

373 ; Beardsley's History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Connecticut, i. 310. 

41 Conn. Col. Kec, xiv. 221, 231. 



25 

of the legislature in 1775. Furtliermore, the legislature, 
much against his own wishes, and a good deal to the annoj^- 
ance of Massachusetts, made him, towards the end of April, 
one of the bearers of a letter from Governor Trumbull to Gov- 
enor Gage, complaining of what the writer was inclined to re- 
gard as "a most unprovoked attack upon the lives and prop- 
erty of His Majesty's subjects," and pleading for a suspension 
of hostilities. Even at this date, when the war had begun at 
Lexington and Concord, the people of Connecticut abhorred 
" the idea of taking up arms against the troops of their Sove- 
reign," although, on "the principle of self-defense," they were 
resolved to fight, if necessary, either for themselves or for 
"their brethren." ^^ As far as appears, Johnson might have 
written such a letter himself. The mission of course was 
futile, and peaceful Connecticut was soon in thickest of the 
fight. It was still, however, a defensive war, prosecuted in 
behalf of the rights of Englishmen within the empire. Dr. 
Dwight tells us that the thought of indepeaidence was derided 
by zealous whigs in the colony even after the battle of Bunker 
Hill. '^ 3 And Johnson, however much he regretted the neces- 
sity of forcible resistance to invasion, and however little he 
hoped for a successful issue, continued to act as a member of 
the Connecticut government during the whole of the year 
1775, when the commonwealth was doing its utmost against 
the king's troops and fortresses and ships. And when the 
king declared the colonists rebels, Johnson shared the re- 
jDroach, along with Trumbull and Israel Putnam and Ethan 
Allen. 

It is evident, however, that the people felt that he did not 
share their enthusiasm. A paper found by Mr. Hoadly, the 
state librarian, and to be printed in the next and final volume 
of the Colonial Records, (should that appear, as is earnestly 
to be hoped,*) is very significant here. It gives, what we sel- 
dom have, the votes of the freemen at the September nomina- 
tion for members of the couucil, and Johnson's name is the 

42 Life and Times, 109-12, 210-12 (App.) 

43 Travels, i. 159. 

* Dr. Hoadly is now (October, 1889,) superintending its passsge through the press, 



26 



last of the twenty put in nomination. The higher numbers 
exceed four thousand, while Johnson received less than one 
thousand votes. At the election in April, 1776, when twelve 
of the twenty were chosen, he was naturally not one of them. 
For the time the whigs of Connecticut had disowned him, 
though he was as good a whig as before. But his defeat was 
probably fortunate for him, since he must have opposed the 
action which the assembly unanimously took in June, by in- 
structing the delegates of the commonwealth in the second 
continental congress to vote for independence. 
I Johnson's reasons for thinking the famous Declaration which 
followed, an unwise step, may be clearer to us, and even in 
some degree command our sympathy, as we read the words 
used by the assembly in the following October: "This Repub- 
lic," (to wit, Connecticut,) "is, and shall forever be and re- 
main, a free, sovereign and independent state." *^ Johnson 
believed in state rights, and contended for them throughout 
his public life ; he did not believe in state sovereignty, and 
he was now bearing witness to the necessity of a supreme cen- 
tral government. He separated from Trumbull in 1776 in be- 
half of the iDriucij)le which Buckingham summoned the com- 
monwealth to vindicate in 1861. It is true that Connecticut 
did not dream of acting apart from the other states, and that 
the phrase "state sovereignty" was often used to express vei*y 
nearly the same idea which now attaches to the phrase "state 
rights." But thought, as well as language, was confused at 
that period with respect to the novel political system which 
emerged at the Declaration of Independence, and the sove- 
reignty which Connecticut meant to claim was something 
quite beyond anything that the system admitted of. We can 
see that a new sovereign, stronger than George the Third, was 
proclaimed in the Declaration ; that it proceeded from an 
authority capable of binding all the states into one larger 
state, the authority of the sovereign people. But the very 
men who signed that instrument did not see this, or they 
would hardly have gone on to frame the Articles- of Confede- 
ration in behalf of sovereisfn states. Those articles, fortu- 



27 

nately not adopted until the war was nearly ovei*, (1781) were 
like an abdication on the part of the neAv king between his 
accession and his coronation. And we all know that the rule 
of the states, substituted for that of the people, very nearly 
ruined the country. Dr. Johnson, in spite of bis clear politi- 
cal insight, perhaps did not recognize the incoming lord par- 
amount any more than his neighbors did. But he undoubt- 
edly perceived the immense difficulty of the situation created 
by cutting one bond of union before anothei", equally strong, 
was visible somewhere. Even Patrick Henry, eager to fight, 
and eager for independence, would have had the Declaration 
delayed until the colonies should have united as a confede- 
racy. ^^ And Johnson's mistake seems to have been that of 
being a "Union man" eighty-five years too soon. Moreover, 
he was not mistaken in thinking, as most men had thought 
until then, that freedom was possible without independence. 
England could learn to respect colonial rights, and the subse- 
quent history of the British empire on the whole proves this. 
It is even probable that the lesson would have been learned 
in another year, and that the war for freedom would have 
closed triumphantly with the battle of Saratoga. And that 
a man who foresaw such evils as the country actually suffered 
before state sovereignty was repudiated, should have shrunk 
from independence, implies no failure of patriotism. John 
Dickinson, the famous "Pennsylvania Farmer," though in com- 
mand of a regiment enlisted to fight the king, opposed the 
Declaration on the floor of congress, thereby furnishing, in 
the judgment of the historian Hildreth, one of the two or three 
highest examples of moral courage in American history. 

But while Johnson's conscience would not have permitted 
him to take part, as a public man, in dissolving what we may 
call the British union, he could and did, as a private citizen, 
give his aid in repelling invaders. He subscribed money for 
the common defence, he promoted enlistments, he furnished 
a soldier for the war, and he was ready, before the war was 
over, to take the oath of fidelity to the United States. ^ ^ 

45 Tyler's Patrick Henry, 171-6. 

46 Life and Times, 116. 



28 



Duviug liis retirement be was once (1779) arrested by a 
miHtai'y officer for baving promised, against bis own judg- 
ment, to ask General Tr3'0n not to burn Stratford. But tbe 
civil autbority refused to bold bim, and bis old friend, Gover- 
nor Trumbull, may bave seen a partial resemblance between 
tbe proposed mission to Tryon and tbe one on wbicb he bim- 
self bad sent bim, four years earlier, to Gage, at tbe risk of 
offending Massacbusetts. In tbe present case it appears tbat 
tbe majority of tbe Stratford freemen were offended at being 
made to seem willing to bold "a traitorous correspondence 
witli tbe enemy," and tbey prepared a statement for publica- 
tion in tbe New Haven newspaper. But tbey must bave 
tbougbt better of it, since tbat paper, tbe Connecticut Journal^ 
is apparently silent about tbe wbole transaction.*'^ 

It is well known tbat many Americans became partisans of 
England during tbe war, after baving zealously opposed par- 
liamentary taxation. But Dr. Jobnson never was transformed 
into a partisan of England. And bis belief tbat tbe dissolu- 
tion of tbe union with Great Britain, at tbat time, was unwise, 
a belief wbicb be never renounced,*^ did not permanently 
affect bis standing among bis contemporaries. Before tbe 
articles of peace were signed be was once more serving tbe 
commonwealtb, and once more in defence of a chartered 
rigbt, tbe title of Connecticut to tbe land on wbicb tbe Sus- 
quehanna Company bad made settlements. Tbe title bad been 
approved by high legal authority in England, and the unani- 
mous decision now given in favor of Pennsjdvania, may have 
suggested to our advocate tbe reflection that independence 
had not increased the security of state constitutions. 

This appointment was a mark of confidence on the part of 
the government. The people, in turn, soon showed bow 
highly tbey rated character above opinions by electing John- 
son once more to the council. In 1784 he was sent to the 
continental congress, and in 1787 he was first in the Connec- 
ticut delegation to the convention which framed tbe Consti- 
tution of the United States. It appears that he had been 

47 Life and Times, 112-6; Hist, of Stratf. Pt. I., 383-6. 

48 Life and Times, 85. 



29 



opposed to the convention,*'' and he certainly had some rea- 
son to fear that the miseries caused by state sovereignty , 
would now react to the prejudice of state rights. What the 
convention really had to do was, with a difference, what the 
British parliament had failed to do, namely to find out to 
govern a nation and an empire, a single state and a collection 
of states, through the same legislature. The British experi- 
ment had failed because the supreme legislature, representiug 
the peojDle of a single state, had tried to take money fi'om the 
j)eople of states which were not represented. But the Amer- 
ican experiment had already proved that the supreme legisla- 
ture could not get money through the local legislatures. Its 
credit was ruined by their disregard of its requisitions, and it 
must assume the power of taxation. Parliament was having 
its revenge on the continental congress. An American con- 
gress, however, might rightfully tax Americans because they 
would be represented in it. But how should they be repre- 
sented? In laying taxes congress must undertake to govern 
them not as members of several bodies politic but as members 
of one, as a single people. And when it should begin to act 
thus directly on the people the people ought to be represented 
equally. One man in Delaware ought not to have the taxing- 
power, and the general governing power, of sixteen men in 
Vu'ginia, which would be the case if Delaware and Virginia 
should have an equal vote in the new congress, as they had 
in the old. It was in fact the sovereignty of the people which 
had now to be re-asserted, and it must find expression in a ^ 
truly representative legislature. Most of the leading men in ' 
the convention, therefore, men like Madison and Hamilton, 
devoted themselves to the task of making the new rej^resen- j 
tative body purely national, by wholly depriving the states of ' 
the equal vote, leaving their weight in congress to depend on 
their population. 

Dr. Johnson, who had insisted on "due subordination" 
within the old empire, and who had found it so hard to "go 
with his state" in seceding from the empire, believed as firmly 
as Madison and Hamilton in a strong central government. 

49 Bincroft's Historj' of the Constitution, ii. 50, 418 (App.) 



30 



But he was not willing that what was then called a "partial" 
or "residuary sovereignty" should be lost to the states, and 
he feared that they would lose it if congress should repre- 
sent the people exclusively. It apparently was assumed in 
some quarters that they had fulfilled their function, as states, 
by protecting individual rights against invasion from the cen- 
tral state, and that they must disappear, or become atrophied, 
since that had been exscinded. Madison avowed the wish to 
reduce the states, as far as possible, to the condition of coun- 
ties,^" and this, to a New Engiander, was nearly equivalent 
to abolishing them. And when a plea for state rights was 
offered, some of the advocates of a purely national system 
described the states, in reply, as "artificial," or even as "im- 
•aginary" beings, to which it was monstrous to sacrifice the 
rights of men. ■' ^ 

Those who defended the claim of the states to representa- 
tion in their corporate character generally treated the ques- 
tion as an issue between the small states and the large ones. 
They asserted that the former would be at the mercy of the 
latter if the equal vote allowed in the continental congress 
were taken away. It was easy for Madison to show, as John 
Adams had shown in 1776, that the larger states, (Virginia, 
Pennsylvania and Massachusetts,) had no common interests 
apart from the others. ^ 2 And he justly urged that a strong 
central government would best protect the small states. Had 
Madison been as familiar with the history of New England as 
he was with that of Greece he might have referred here to the 
confederacy of 1643, in which the one vote of Massachusetts 
commonly outweighed the other three, and which was power- 
less to prevent Connecticut from annexing New Haven piece- 
meal. The New England delegates, in fact, knew very well, 
thanks to their town meetings, that local rights may be secure 
under a vigorous general administration, and none of those 
from Connecticut maintained the cause of the small states 
violently. Johnson, however, stood alone in the so-called 
■ "" > 

50 Elliot's Debates, v. 253. 

51 EUiot's Debates, v. 258, 263, 267. 

52 Elliot's Debates, v. 250-3 ; Works of Jobn Adams, ii. 500, note, 



31 



"state rights party," in resting tlie argument against a one- 
sided nationalism on the simple fact that the states existed. 
It is poj;sible that had he spoken as often as Sherman and 
Ellsworth he would have expressed, like them, a moderate in- 
terest in the small states as such, but what he actually said 
indicates no interest in them whatever. His object was now, 
as in the Stamp Act congress, to secure certain bodies politic, 
the large and the small alike, against the invasion of their 
rights by a central authority which he nevertheless recognized 
as supreme. For him the colonial charters had passed from 
the British into the American constitution, and the sovereign 
people must acknoAvledge and protect them. 

The last of Dr. Johnson's three brief speeches on this sub- 
ject, made at the opening of the debate on the day after Frank- 
lin's famous proposal of daily prayers, is thus reported by 
Madison; "The controversy must be endless whilst gentle- 
men differ in the grounds of their arguments : those on one 
side considering the states as districts of people composing 
one political society, those on the other side considering them 
as so many political societies. The fact is, that the states do 
exist as political societies, and a government is to be formed 
for them in their political capacit}^, as M^ell as for the individ- 
uals composing them. Does it not seem to follow that if the 
states, as such, are to exist," (as nearly all felt to be inevita- 
ble) "they must be armed with some power of self-defence? 
On the whole he thought that as, in some respects, 
the states are to be considered in their political capacity, and, 
in others, as districts of individual citizens, the two ideas 
embraced on different sides, instead of being opposed to each 
other ought to be combined — that in one branch the peo^de 
ought to be represented, in the other, the states.'''' ^^ 

It should be borne in mind that the division of the general 
legislature into two branches, of which the second, (the sen- 
ate,) should after a fashion represent the states, had formed 
part of the "Virginia plan," offered to the convention three 
days before Johnson took his seat,' and that about three weeks 
before this speech was made Sherman had declared equal rep- 

53 Elliot's Debates, v. 255. 



32 



reseutation of the states in the second branch to be indispens- 
able. ^ * So far, Johnson was simply supporting his colleagues. 
But while the friends of the Virginia plan strenuously opposed 
equal representation in either branch as unjust, Sherman per- 
sonally preferred the "New Jersey plan" of a legislature in 
one chamber, representing the states. The union which he 
really desired was a league of sovereignties. ^ ^ Now Johnson's 
whole political career, above all his opposition to an indepen- 
dence which seemed to threaten, and which had nearly jn-o- 
duced, disintegration, had been a protest against such a sys- 
tem as his colleague wished for. But although the difference 
between him and Sherman was probably more radical than 
that between him and Madison, he could act with Sherman 
against Madison because the double representation offered by 
the former and rejected by the latter, was precisely what ex- 
isting facts, as Johnson saw them, made not simply expedient 
but right. He virtually held up before his associates that 
unwritten constitution which is, as Judge Jameson says, to 
be "considered as the outcome of social and political forces 
in history, as an organic growth . . . as a fact.," ^^ We 
need not assume that Johnson had learned the doctrine of his- 
torical development ; it is enough that his clear insight showed 
him a certain result of development. He perceived that the 
new system, really evolved out of the old, retained the rmity 
and the diversity of the latter, and must be accepted as it was. 
The single state and the group of states, the one political 
society, and the many, were alike there, only they now occu- 
pied the same territory, and the one people inhabiting them 
all had taken the place of the crown. It was nation and 
empire in one. The national character of this complex body 
politic should appear, therefore, in a popular branch of thfe 
supreme legislature, speaking for the sovereign people, while 
another, the mouthpiece of co-equal states, should be the sym- 
bol and the safeguard of the old colonial liberties, the impe- 
rial signet on the young republic. 

54 Elliot's Debates, v. 127, 181 ; Hildreth's History of the United States, Kevis. Ed 

ill. 485. 

55 Elliot's Debates, v. 218-9, 260, etc. 

56 The Constitutional Convention, 3d Ed., 66, 



33 



Mr. George Ticknor Curtis says, with reference to Dr. JoLn- 
son's speech, that "neither party was ready to adopt the sug- 
gestion" about a combination of views, ^'^ and what Johnson 
urged as right in itself, was finally done under the form of a 
compromise, and largely through the efforts of Sherman and 
Ellsworth. But what took place was, in reality, the submis- 
sion of both parties to the impersonal, infallible arbitration of 
an historical evolution, the results of which Johnson saw more 
clearly than either. And when, a year later, Hamilton and 
Madison were pleading so ably and magnanimously for the 
constitution with discontented state rights partisans, we find 
them more than once defending positions which the older 
statesmen had defended against them, and doctrines on which 
he had been acting when they were school-boys. They were 
bearing unconscious witness to the strength of the system 
which he knew to be already in operation, and which had been 
the real antagonist of theii- theories. '"' ^ 

Dr. Johnson made an interesting contribution to the com- 
pleteness of the federal system after the great struggle was 
over, and when, as Mr. Bancroft says, " Connecticut had won 
the day." It was voted on his motion, by a large majority, 
that the jurisdiction of the supreme court should be "ex-/ 
tended to cases of law and equity," and then, with no dissent- 
ing votes, that it should embrace "all cases arising under the ^ 
Constitution." This, according to Mr. Bancroft, finally dis- 
posed of the plan favored by Madison, of giving congress a 
veto on state legislation, and confined the power fo revers- 
ing state laws to the judiciary, in cases brought before it. ^ ^ 
This is the principle (differently applied) for which Johnson 
pleaded with Lord Hillsborough in 1768. Jie thus fitly closed 
the battle in behalf of the freedom of local legislation which 
he liad begun in England nearly twenty years before, ^ '^ and 
the supreme court is to-day the most conspicuous guardian 
of state rights. 

57 Curtis's History of the Constitution, ii. 138. 

58 See The Federalist, Ed, 1826, 152, (No. 28), 200 (No. 37), 263 (No. 46), 333 (No. 59). 

346-7 (No. 62). 
^ 59 Bancroft's Hist, of Const., u. 198; Elliot's Debates, v. 170-1, 481-2. 
60 See above, pp. (13-13-15.) 



34 

"Wlien the draft of tlie Constitution was to receive its final 
form, and was entrusted for tliat purpose- to a committee ap- 
pointed by ballot, which included four leaders of debate, Alex- 
ander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, James Madison and Rufus 
i|[{^ing, Dr. Johnson was its chaii'man. And though the prep- 
■varation of the new draft was the work of Morris, Johnson did 
not fail in his own duty of oversight and revision, for his 
handwriting is still to be seen in corrections made in the orig- 
inal document, and included in the Constitution as it stands." ^ 
And the Constitution as it stands probably expresses his life-1 
long political convictions more adequately than those of any i 
other member of the committee. The convention chose the 
right man to superintend the final touches upon its great work. 
But he was the right man especially because its great work 
had really been done by "progressive history," and because 
few Americans, if any, had been so closely identified with the 
'development of the federal out of the imperial constitution, 
from the moment when the process becomes clearly visible at 
the Stamp Act congress. This is not less but more true as 
respects his attitude at the middle point of the process, eleven 
years after the congress, eleven years before the convention, 
w;hen his countrymen seemed to him to be removing one essen- 
tial part of their political system, the supreme central author- 
ity, without knowing whether it could be replaced. For then 
he accepted a situation which he would have no hand in creat- 
ing, and adjusted himself to it without factious and useless 
opposition. And so he could take, and his countrymen could 
let him take, an honorable and useful part in the task of giv- 
ing just scope to the new central authority which was all the 
while present, and which had spoken in the Declaration of In- 
dependence, " the authority of the good people of these colo- 
nies." Dr. Johnson was undoubtedly one of the most culti- 
vated men in America, and his mental and moral action at this 
period admirably illustrate the value of culture. In that we 
have, according to Mr. Matthew Arnold, "the endeavour to see 
things as they are, to draw towards a knowledge of the univer- 
sal order which seems to be intended and aimed at in the 

61 Life and Times, 128. 



35 

world, and wliicli it is a man's happiness to go along with or 
his misery to go counter to."'^^ Di'. Johnson instinctively 
yielded to that which makes history progressive, the move- 
ment of regulated forces, forces which control the most sensi- 
tive conscience because they are the expression of laws, of 
laws which instruct the best trained intellect because they are 
thoughts. He is an admirable example of that unreserved 
self-surrender of the good and wise to the irresistible march 
of progress which is their testimony to the truth that 

" thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs," 

and which gives them the power to serve their fellow-men by 
helping "to make reason and the will of God prevail." And 
his firm and effective maintenance from first to last of the polit- 
ical principles which are embodied in the Constitution warrant 
the assertion that he was one of the best qualified statesmen 
of the most critical period of American history. 

When the Constitution went into operation in 1789, Dr. 
Johnson became one of the senators from Connecticut, Oliver 
Ellsworth being his colleague. The two acted together in or- 
ganizing that "court for commonwealths . . . the most 
august in Christendom," (as a descendant of Roger Sherman 
has stj'^led the supreme court,) "^^ over which Ellsworth was 
afterwards to preside, the principle of which Johnson had 
long before taught a British minister to respect. In 1791, soon 
after congress removed to Philadelphia, whither he could not 
follow it without neglecting his duty to Columbia College, (of 
which he had been made president in 1787,) Johnson resigned 
his seat in the senate. He was succeeded by Sherman, who 
meanwhile had been serving with distinction in the house of 
representatives. His academic career lasted nine j'ears longer, 
until his resignation in 1800, Avhen he was almost seventy- 
three. He lived in cheerful and dignified retirement for nearly 
twenty years in Stratford, where he died, soon after passing 
his ninety-second birthday, on the fovirteenth of November, 
1819. He barely outlived the colonial charter, which, by 

62 Culture and Anarchy, Eng. Ed., 11. 

63 Prof. S. E. Baldwin, in New Haven Col. ffist. Soc. Papers, iii. 291. 



36 



serving as tlie state constitution until 1818, had vindicated 
his belief that the English sovereigns had established true and 
free states in America. It had also been proved that the great 
native sovereign whose accession, in disguise, had not been 
much more visible to Dr. Johnson than to other men, was a 
rather better guardian of local government than the king of 
England. For the charter had had nearly thirty years of 
security, not absolute indeed, but greater, upon the whole, 
than it enjoyed even when it lay, (if it did lie,) in the heart of 
the Wyllys Oak. 



Note. — The foregoing paper was read before the New Haven Colony Historical Society, 
February 27, 1888. Slight additions were made at that time, and a few verbal changes 
have been made since. But it appears in very nearly the form in which it was read at 
Bridgeport. 



36 



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